Chapter 7
I bolted.
Ignoring Miller’s command, ignoring the frost searing my bare soles, I sprinted across the frozen dirt behind the house and ripped open the doors of the lean-to beside the well pump.
There sat the Briggs & Stratton pressure washer. Four thousand PSI. A commercial-grade, overhead-valve gas monster designed to blast oil stains and strip weathered barn paint down to bare grain.
I grabbed the tubular steel handles and hauled the hundred-pound frame across the frozen ruts. The solid rubber tires bounced violently over rocks, rattling the brass fittings.
My raw, blistered hands screamed with white-hot pain as I jammed the garden hose coupling onto the exterior frost-free spigot, twisting the brass threads until they bit. I uncoiled the high-pressure line, shoved the wand into the quick-connect nozzle, and snapped the yellow fifteen-degree cutting tip into place.
I reached down, slammed the choke shut, and set the throttle to full.
I gripped the pull-cord with raw knuckles and yanked.
The recoil ripped through my shoulders. The engine sputtered, coughed a plume of black soot, and died.
“Come on,” I sobbed, tears of agony and terror blurring my sight. “Start, you bastard, start!”
I set my bare foot against the iron frame and hauled on the cord with my entire body weight.
*ROOOOAAAR.*
The four-stroke engine caught with an explosive, deafening blast that shattered the stillness between the house and the woods. The muffler shrieked at thirty-six hundred RPM, filling the alleyway with gray exhaust.
Down in the ravine, the shouts of the rescue effort were instantly swallowed by the mechanical roar.
I didn't care about the noise. Noise didn't carry charges. Hemoglobin did.
I dragged the vibrating, pulsating hose around the corner of the porch, trailing the spray wand like a weapon.
There was the pink surveyor’s flag.
There was the dark, rust-colored crust of Marcus’s blood, seeping into the crushed limestone beside the bottom riser.
I raised the heavy steel wand, pointed the nozzle three inches from the pink flag, and squeezed the trigger.
*KRRRRRR-SHHHHHHHHH!*
A knife of pressurized water struck the limestone with catastrophic force.
The pink plastic flag snapped at the stem, sent spinning thirty feet into the dead brush.
The gravel didn't just wash; it disintegrated. Four thousand pounds of hydraulic force gouged straight into the frozen earth, shattering the top two inches of stone into powdery, pulverized dust. The dark, coagulated gore—the clots of oxidized venous blood and shredded tissue Marcus’s heel had left behind—was blasted into an airborne aerosol of pale pink mist that blew away on the freezing breeze.
I clamped the trigger down with both hands, my forearms shuddering violently against the kickback.
I swept the nozzle in wide, furious strokes.
I blasted the lower wooden riser of the porch where Marcus’s boot had struck, stripping the white oil paint down to shredded, hairy pine fibers.
I scoured the twin drag furrows running from the culvert to the porch steps, trenching the limestone, rolling the stones over and over beneath the screaming jet, forcing every speck of dried blood, every drop of hydraulic fluid, every trace of cellular debris down the slope.
The pulverized slurry surged down the natural grade of the driveway, washing in a foaming, muddy torrent straight into the roadside ditch, where the rushing runoff from the melting ice swept it away toward the highway drainage pipes.
*Gone.*
*Scoured to the bedrock.*
Down at the bottom of the ridge, through the roaring haze of water and engine exhaust, I saw motion.
Miller and Hank had hauled Clara up onto the snowy shoulder of Ridge Road. Miller was wrapping his duty coat around her trembling shoulders, but his head snapped up toward the house.
He heard the engine.
He saw the cloud of white water mist billowing above my porch.
Even from seventy yards away, through the screen of hemlocks, I could see the rage stiffen his posture. He left Clara with Hank, drew his radio, and began charging up the steep gravel incline, his boots slipping on the frozen shale as he ran.
*Kill it.*
I released the trigger.
I reached down to the vibrating engine block, found the red rocker switch, and slapped the ignition off.
The deafening mechanical howl died instantly, replaced by the ragged, spitting hiss of hot manifold pipes cooling in the freezing drizzle.
The silence that rushed back was suffocating.
The driveway was unrecognizable.
Where the stain had been, there was only a clean, deeply trenched expanse of washed gray granite, scoured down to the sub-base, dripping with harmless, clean runoff. Not a fleck of dried blood. Not a smear of iron. The pink flag was gone, swept into the ditch.
There was nothing left to swab.
Before Miller could clear the final switchback and breach the gravel apron, I dropped the aluminum wand into the mud, spun on my numb, bleeding heels, and climbed the shredded porch steps.
I ducked through the heavy front door, pulled the mahogany slab tight against the frame, and threw the deadbolt.
The brass lock clicked into the strike plate with the finality of a guillotine blade.
I stood in the vestibule, pressing my back flat against the cold mahogany, my chest heaving against ribs that felt cracked from the inside out. My breath came in thin, ragged whistles that burned all the way down to my diaphragm.
Outside, the mountain was supposed to be empty.
It wasn't.
Through the narrow leaded glass sidelight, I saw them. Hank’s bloodhounds hadn’t stayed in the ravine.
Down in the hemlock hollow, the wind had abruptly sheered, curling back up the granite ridge like a draft through a cracked chimney. The lead hound—a massive, ninety-pound redbone with sagging jowls and eyes like wet marbles—had thrown his muzzle skyward, caught the air current, and let out a sound that turned my marrow to slush.
A long, hollow, baying howl.
*Awooooo-oo-oo.*
The second dog took up the cry immediately, a frantic, frantic yelping that tore through the pines.
Through the trees, I saw Hank’s fluorescent orange hunting vest jerk violently forward as the dogs hit the leashes, nearly pulling the old man off his feet. He stumbled into the brambles, shouting, fighting for footing on the glazed pine needles.
“Miller!” Hank’s voice carried through the fog, raw and echoing off the foundation stones. “Miller, get up here! They ain't heading down the wash—they’re throwing back toward the north grade! They got a hard line!”
Deputy Miller was still jogging up the apron, panting, his face purple with fury from the engine noise he’d just heard. “What do you mean, north grade? Clara said he went down the timber cut!”
“The wind’s carrying it!” Hank yelled back, his arms straining against the twin leather straps. “They’re pulling toward the house, Miller! They’re tracking right to the crawlspace skirt!”
A scream of pure animal terror threatened to tear out of my throat, but I caught it behind clamped teeth, tasting copper and bile.
The crawlspace skirt.
The north side of my foundation was built of rough-cut river stone and concrete blocks, interrupted every ten feet by rectangular crawlspace ventilation grates—corroded steel mesh designed to keep out raccoons and vent the damp mountain air from the earth below the subfloor.
